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Jaster Mereel
Jaster Mereel (more commonly known as Boba Fett) was a human male Journeyman Protector and warrior who saw galactic fame as a Bounty hunter. Born on Concord Dawn in 27 BBY, Mereel served as a Journeyman Protector, one of his homeworld's respected lawkeepers, and his martial prowess earned him the respect of his peers. In 2 BBY, Mereel met and fell in love with Sintas Vel, a young Kiffar bounty hunter, and the two soon married. By this point in time, dissension had come to the Mandalore sector in the form of a number of amoral Mandalorians who rallied to a Mandalorian soldier named Tor Vizsla, and therein formed a splinter group known as the Death Watch with Vizsla as their leader, under the pretense of returning the Mandalorians to their ancient roots as conquerors and raiders with the goal of instigating another war of conquest. Much to the chagrin of the New Mandalorian government, civil war soon broke out between the Death Watch and the New Mandalorians. In the year 0 BBY, Mereel returned to his homeworld as the war spilled onto Concord Dawn. Hunted by the Death Watch after a lost firefight, Mereel and his men were forced to rely on the kindness of his friend and fellow Journeyman Protector, Boba Fett. Unfortunately, the Death Watch captured Fett's young son, Jango, and attempted to use the boy to force the boy's father into revealing the location of Mereel and his officers. Fett would not give in and a chaotic firefight erupted when Fett's wife attempted to save her husband and son. Sadly, both Fett and his wife were killed, although Mereel was able to step in to save young Jango as well as his younger cousin Jantong's lives. Mereel regrouped his forces in a nearby town and laid in wait until the Death Watch arrived, at which time he sprung an ambush. As the battle came to a close, Mereel decided to take the two boys with him back home to his wife as the officers departed Concord Dawn, and he eventually came to consider the boys his sons. In 1 ABY, Mereel learned that his wife Sintas was raped by his fellow officer Montross Lenovar, a man whom he had considered a friend. In revenge for his actions, Mereel killed Lenovar, a crime for which he was arrested, imprisoned, and tried. He was subsequently charged with murder, found unrepentantly guilty and exiled from Concord Dawn, severing all contact from his family. Unknown to Mereel at the time was that he and Sintas had conceived a child just prior to his exile, Ailyn, a child that would be born by 2 ABY and later take her father's identity in an effort of hunting him down for "leaving" his family. At some point after this, Mereel would change his identity to that of his fallen friend Boba Fett, and became a bounty hunter. Within a year of his new career, Fett achieved much notoriety and became known as the Galaxy's best bounty hunter, often working for the Empire. He collaborated with Darth Vader on several occasions, and the Dark Lord even developed a grudging respect for him. During this time, Fett made his most notable bounty when he captured Rebel hero Han Solo, and delivered him to Jabba the Hutt. In 4 ABY, during the Battle of the Great Pit of Carkoon, Fett fought against the group of Rebel rescuers. However, he was inadvertently knocked into the mouth of the Sarlacc by Solo. Though no one in recorded history had ever escaped from the Sarlacc, Fett was able to escape, though not unscathed. Thanks to his iron will and Mandalorian armor, he was able to fight his way out of the beast's belly, and later killed the Sarlacc. Biography Early life Jaster Mereel was born in 27 BBY on the agricultural world of Concord Dawn in the Outer Rim's Mandalore sector. Mereel grew up in a moderately wealthy home with at least one brother, his twin Sheckil Mereel. As an adult, Mereel served as a Journeyman Protector, one of his homeworld's respected lawkeepers, and Mereel's martial prowess earned him the respect of his peers. In 12 BBY, while hunting the spice trafficker Hallolar Voors on his homeworld's behalf, Mereel saw Han Solo for the first time on the world of Jubilar. In 2 BBY, Mereel met and fell in love with Sintas Vel, a young Kiffar bounty hunter, and the two soon married. However, Mereel's job allowed for hard work and few attachments, and the relationship became strained at times despite the love between Jaster and Sintas. By this point in time, a large number of Mandalorians had joined the peaceful movement, and now holder of the majority of the government, called the New Mandalorians, a reformist political faction formed in the aftermath of the Second Clone War, a devastating conflict with the Galactic Empire approximately 30 years earlier. The New Mandalorians had moved away from the traditional warrior ways, denouncing the old warrior codes, and believed that the best opportunity for Mandalorian survival and prosperity would come through being peaceful, neutral, and tolerant. Having noticed many Mandalorians' dissatisfaction with the wide-spread savagery that had become prevalent in certain warrior circles, Mereel hoped to hold the Mandalorians to a higher standard of behavior. Further dissension came in the form of a number of amoral Mandalorians who resented Mereel for his attempts to rein in their enjoyed lifestyles of unaccountability. These malcontents rallied to a Mandalorian soldier named Tor Vizsla, and therein formed a splinter group known as the Death Watch with Vizsla as their leader, under the pretense of returning the Mandalorians to their ancient roots as conquerors and raiders with the goal of instigating another war of conquest. Mandalorian Civil War Though the Death Watch's goals were quite opposite to the New Mandalorians', they couldn't support going to war with them. However, as malcontent grew, Mereel and the New Mandalorians were increasingly pressured by hard-liners such as Montross Lenovar to destroy the Death Watch, and civil war soon broke out between the Death Watch and the New Mandalorians, with Mereel being put in charge of combating them. In the year 0 BBY, Mereel returned to his homeworld as the war spilled onto Concord Dawn. Hunted by the Death Watch after a lost firefight, Mereel and his men were forced to rely on the kindness of his friend and fellow Journeyman Protector, Boba Fett I. He offered them refuge on his family's farm, and brought them food in the fields. Unfortunately, the Death Watch captured Fett's young son, Jango, and attempted to use the boy, in addition to a brutal beating, to force the Journeyman Protector to reveal the location of Mereel and his officers. Fett would not give in and a chaotic firefight erupted when Fett's wife attempted to save her husband and son. Sadly, both Fett and his wife were killed, although Mereel was able to step in to save young Jango's life, though giving up his cover in the process. As the Death Watch set fire to the field Mereel and his troops had fled into, Jango led them as well as his younger blood brother Jantong to an irrigation pipe that would take them safely away from the blaze. Mereel regrouped his forces in a nearby town and laid in wait until the Death Watch arrived, at which time he sprung an ambush. With the Protectors firing on the Death Watch troops, Jango placed an explosive charge on the underside of the armored speeder Vizsla rode into the town upon. The tank exploded, although Vizsla would manage to escape. As the battle came to a close, Mereel located Jango standing over the body of the Death Watch soldier who'd murdered his parents. Praising the boy's courage, Mereel decided to take Jango and Jantong with him back home to his wife as the officers departed Concord Dawn, and he soon came to consider the boys his sons. Exile In 1 ABY, Mereel learned that his wife Sintas had been raped months prior by his colleague Montross Lenovar, a man whom he had considered a friend. Mereel soon confronted his colleague over this, and despite Sintas' pleas to the contrary, Mereel killed Lenovar. After committing the crime, he was immediately arrested and imprisoned. Within a short amount of time, Mereel was tried in court where he was represented by the somewhat famous Irving Creel. But because Mereel didn't reveal the truth of Lenovar's own crimes to the magistrate in an attempt to protect Sintas, he was subsequently charged with murder, found unrepentantly guilty and exiled from Concord Dawn, severing all contact from his family. Unknown to Mereel at the time was that he and Sintas had conceived a daughter just prior to his exile, Ailyn. His child would be born by 2 ABY and later take her father's identity in an effort of hunting him down for "leaving" his family. At some point after this, Mereel would change his identity to that of "Boba Fett" in honor of his fallen friend, and in order to put his skills to good use, became a bounty hunter, fully dedicating himself to the trade. Galactic Civil War Becoming a bounty hunter Over the next few months, Fett's reputation grew among bounty hunters and assassins. Boba acquired the starship ''Slave I and continued to upgrade pieces of Mandalorian armor. It was said that he had at least three complete sets of armor from which to use, one of which was mostly left in the Sarlacc pit when he escaped. In one of his first bounties, Sise Fromm hired Boba Fett to eliminate the racing team of Jord Dusat and Thall Joben as they prepared their modified landspeeder, the White Witch, for the Boonta Speeder Race. At the time, Fett owned a droid named BL-17, and used him to sow confusion among Joben's droids. Failing to sabotage their racer before the race began, Fett entered the race in his own craft, the Silver Speeder, unaware of a bomb planted on Joben's speeder. Fett harassed Thall throughout the event until one of his own weapons backfired on him, knocking him out of the race and allowing Thall to win. An unhappy Fett decided to turn Sise Fromm over to Jabba the Hut for the bounty that the Hutt crime lord had placed on his rival. After working for Jabba, Fett worked for Darth Vader on numerous occasions. During the Galactic Civil War, Fett was contracted by Vader to aid he and the Imperials in capturing the Star Tours-owned StarSpeeder 1000 ST-1401 either during the raid itself or to track it down and deliver it to the Imperials, as the vessel contained a spy for the Rebel Alliance. Bounty Hunter's Guild Boba Fett was often employed by the Imperials as a bounty hunter, and chose not to belong to the Bounty Hunters' Guild. If anything, he felt contempt for their rules and the needs that had brought them together. Boba Fett accepted a commission to infiltrate the Guild and destroy it. He had beaten two Guild members, Bossk, an old rival, and Zuckuss, to a bounty. When Boba delivered his quarry to his contact, Kud'ar Mub'at, he was offered the job. He accepted, though he did not know then who was behind the contract. He went to the Guild station under the pretense of joining. The head of the Guild, Bossk's father, Cradossk, welcomed him, but the younger hunters were greatly displeased with his decision to join. Once part of the Guild, Boba assembled a team of hunters, including his old friend, the cyborg D'harhan, to go after Oph Nar Dinnid. The Lyunesi had a huge bounty on his head. The trail led to a clan working for Jabba for whom Dinnid hoped to work, but by the time Boba got there, one of the clan members had killed Dinnid in a fit of rage. In the bloodshed that inevitably followed, D'harhan was killed. Zuckuss reported that Bossk had also been killed. Cradossk was pleased. He had been about to initiate a purge anyway. However, Bossk appeared and tore his hapless father apart. The result was exactly what Fett had been employed to engineer. The Guild was split in two along age lines. Despite their long-standing rivalry, Fett and Bossk teamed up to trap Trhin Voss'on't, a renegade Imperial stormtrooper who had killed his crew and absconded with secret encryption codes, by making it look as if Bossk had managed to kill both Zuckuss and Fett, and now wanted to team up with Voss'on't. This scheme worked up to a point, but Voss'on't eventually caught on. Boba and Bossk managed to capture him, but he triggered an earthquake device and injured both hunters severely. A resentful Bossk tried to take revenge on Fett for his part in the Guild's destruction, but Boba, aided by Zuckuss, got the drop on him. The alliance with Zuckuss was a brief one, for Boba, still under the employ of Mub'at, turned the tables on both of them. They barely made it out of Slave I alive. Boba took Voss'on't to Mub'at's web, chased the whole way by the renegade Imperial's men. Boba ignored them, but when he dropped out of hyperspace, Slave I was immediately attacked. Faced with two alternatives, flee or fight his attacker, Boba found a third. He put Slave I between his assailant and Mub'at's web, then ploughed the ship straight into Mub'at. The arachnid alien was terribly wounded, but refused to pay Boba, informing him that he had not set the bounty. Boba then realized that it had been set by his attacker, whom he had identified as Prince Xizor, the infamous underlord of Black Sun. Mub'at told Boba that Xizor was also the one behind the plan to break up the Guild. When the crime lord arrived, Boba captured him, only to find that Xizor had negotiated a deal with Balancesheet, a now renegade subsystem of Mub'at's that had declared its own autonomy. Xizor did at least pay the bounty on Voss'on't. All Boba could do was limp away in his damaged ship. That was when he realized that Balancesheet had played a last trick, he had taken half the bounty to cover "expenses." For that, Boba vowed, there would be a reckoning. Capture of Han Solo Fett discussed using Solo to capture Skywalker on several occasions and, after one such meeting on Ord Mantell, Fett received word that bounty hunters in his own employ had managed to capture Solo over Hoth and were holding him at a remote location. By the time Fett arrived, however, Solo had escaped. Of the hunters assembled by Vader to capture the ''Millennium Falcon, among them several who had so recently captured Solo for Fett himself, Boba was the only hunter to figure out how the Millennium Falcon eluded Imperial pursuit by hiding among garbage and tracked the ship to Cloud City on Bespin. In his pursuit, he followed the Falcon to Cloud City where he informed Darth Vader of their destination. In response, Vader then sent a detachment of stormtroopers to infiltrate the city. Fett was followed by IG-88B, who he easily destroyed by setting a deadly trap. When Vader arrived, he forced the city's leader, Lando Calrissian, into a twisted agreement that left him no other choice but to betray Solo and his friends, including selling him out to Fett. After the capture of Solo and his companions, Lord Vader used Solo as a test subject for carbon-freezing, which, if successful, he hoped to use on Luke Skywalker. After finding that Solo survived the freezing process, Vader gave him to Boba Fett, who in turn, planned to hand him to Jabba for a hefty bounty. However, it would be several months before Fett delivered Solo to Jabba's palace on Tatooine, and his whereabouts during that time where unknown to Lando and Chewbacca, who scoured the galaxy for leads that would lead them to the bounty hunter. Personality and traits Jaster Mereel was a man of strong morals and a rigid ethical code. Highly respected as one of Concord Dawn's Journeyman Protectors, Mereel's combat prowess won him the respect of his peers. During a time when many Mandalorians had fallen into disreputable brigandage, Mereel's strong ethic would drive him to help the New Mandalorians institute a reform that would change the way the Mandalorians conducted themselves for years to come. Mereel's moral code would also not allow him to stand by when a young Jango Fett was threatened by the Death Watch, giving up his cover to rescue Jango from the more numerous Death Watchmen. Mereel was a confident but pragmatic leader, proud of the skill he and his officers possessed, but was unwilling to let that pride influence his decisions, such as whether or not to retreat in battle. On a personal level, Mereel was a direct speaker who spoke plainly and was unafraid of bluntly casting blame where he felt it was due. At the same time, he cared for his comrades and especially for his wife Sintas Vel, whom he met when she was working as a freelance Bounty hunter. He also cared for Janai and Jantong Fett a great deal, whom Mereel took in when the boys had become orphans after their father was killed, whom was Mereel's friend. After this, he raised them like his own sons with his wife until his untimely exile. Because of his love for Sintas, Mereel was unable to withstand the news that she was raped by his fellow officer and friend, Montross Lenovar. Seeing it as the worst kind of betrayal a friend could do to another, Mereel confronted and killed Lenovar in revenge for it, an act that would push him toward a new life as a Bounty hunter. After his exile, Mereel took on the alias Boba Fett, and within a year's time, Fett gained recognition as one of the greatest bounty hunters around. Many people, including Darth Vader, considered Fett to be the best bounty hunter in the Galaxy. Fett was aware of that opinion and it emboldened him enough to occasionally converse with the Dark Lord in an irreverent tone that no one besides Emperor Palpatine or Grand Moff Tarkin would dare take with him. Throughout the many years of his bounty hunting career, Fett continued to have a strong sense of justice, moral obligation, and adhered to his own code of honor. He took only certain bounties that agreed with his own beliefs and brutal justice. But to those few, he whole-heartedly devoted all of his magnificent skill should the occasion call for it. This led him to believe in a quick, clean kill. His moral code however, did not prevent him from taking numerous bounties from Imperial clients. In fact, he worked for Darth Vader so often that in some instances, Fett was even referred to as Vader's "right-hand man". He once justified this apparent contradiction to Leia by pointing out that the Rebel Alliance had started the Galactic Civil War, not the Empire, and that the Rebels brought only chaos and strife to galactic society, whereas the Empire created order. As Fett believed that order was preferable to chaos regardless of how that order was achieved, he preferred to work for the Empire rather than the Alliance. He also mentioned at one point that he preferred working for clients who would be around to hire him again, and as such refused to work for the Alliance because he thought it's existence would be very short. He was also proud to be a mercenary during his time as Fett, and believed it to be a noble profession worthy of respect. Fett was also an expert marksman and had access to considerable weaponry. Despite having this high-tech arsenal, he was not dependent on it. In his search for the Butcher of Montellian Serat, Fett had to capture him without his armor, equipped only with a bow, some arrows, and a crystal knife, due to electronic detecting equipment installed on the Devaronian's compound. He was dedicated to whatever job he was doing, and would often suspend grudges if it meant completing his mission. In addition to his skills as a marksman, Fett was an extremely adept unarmed combatant. His combat skill, tactical ingenuity, and strength of will even allowed him to engage in personal combat with Darth Vader at one point and survive. While Fett did not exactly hold his own, and Vader's objective was not to kill him, Fett managed to both temporarily resist the Dark Lord's telepathic suggestions and surprise Vader by shooting him in the head. Unfortunately for Fett however, the shot did not penetrate his opponent's helmet, and Vader simply immobilized Fett with the Force when the fight began again. Mereel also had a penchant for alcohol. He mainly liked bloody mary's and Mandalorian beer, the latter especially if it were in his own words "a hot day". Mereel also once said "In some microbreweries, you can’t get the sort of beer we have here on Concord Dawn." Appearances *''Star Wars: The Last One Standing *''Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back'' *''Star Wars: Return of the Jedi'' }} Notes and references Category:Humans Category:Males Category:Inhabitants of Mandalore Category:Bounty hunters Category:Inhabitants of Concord Dawn Category:Impersonators Category:Assassins Category:Mandalorian Protectors Category:New Mandalorians Category:Pilots Category:Journeyman Protectors Category:Torturers and interrogators Category:Yuuzhan Vong collaborators